1. Field of the Invention
Systems and methods consistent with the principles of the invention relate generally to network services and, more particularly, to context-aware processes for allowing users of network services to access account information.
2. Description of Related Art
The current status quo for users with accounts with network services (e.g., Internet services) is to visit a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and provide a unique identifier and password to receive access to the users' account information. This process is detrimental in that a user must leave the context that raised their account related questions in order to have the questions answered. This process can be burdensome to users. For example, publishers and advertisers, who participate in web advertising, have to log in to their account to get information regarding their account's performance. Web advertising publishers host ads from advertisers and collect revenue from the advertisers based on the number of “hits” the ads receive from users accessing documents published by the publishers. Third party publishers may also host their own web pages that further receive, and publish, advertisements maintained by a server associated with a web ad generating entity. The third party publishers may receive revenue from the web ad generating entity based on the number of hits the third party publishers receive on the advertisements published on their own web pages. Web advertising publishers and advertisers, however, cannot access information on how a particular ad performs while viewing the document that includes the ad. Existing account data access processes, therefore, fail to provide account statistics related to a user's current context or state.